I finally got around to respec'ing my formerly 0/6/6/6/6 Cerberus Adept to a 6/6/6/4/4 configuration. It's weird because I still haven't gotten used to putting Singularity into my rotation, but it's a great feeling to randomly see a Singularity kill in the kill-feed.

6/6/6/4/4 is quickly becoming my default Adept build - with variations for special cases, like the Justicar.

Unlocked the VA tonight. Interested in playing him, but it sounds like he's pretty useless without a good group to utilize him. I'll test him out in a few Silver matches before I get gutsy and try him in Gold. Does the Acolyte seem like a suitable gun for him? Figure that will help with shield stripping while I keep my cooldown bonus around +187%.

I use Acolyte and Hurricane on both my Voluses (Voli?) - both with ULM, which nets a 200% (depending on level of guns).

Captainpuke wrote:

Viridis wrote:

I don't like Slayer (or most Vanguards). That is all.

But the dude has a sword! What's wrong with you my good man?

I've finally settled on a Slayer Build I like - specced completely out of Phase Disruptor and fully specced melee. Play him like the Kroguard, but rely on fast teleport-dodging instead of extra-durability. The sword makes for high damage - just use fast light melee attacks and avoid the hard to aim heavy melee unless. Playstye makes you feel like Nightcrawler.

I know lots of folks hate Biotic Slash due to the days of FBW white spamming/farming, but it really is a great power. I find I don't use it nearly as much as charge-melee combos.

Gear is Stronghold Package V, Piranha X and Acolyte X (ULM)

It's not a character that's equipped for all situations, but works well in concert with other biotics.

IMO there is no point in making a slayer without phase disruptor, because at that point you're playing a shittier version of Krogan Vanguard and/or Shadow. so what's the point?

there's also the part where PD is completely awesome.

To me, part of using all the five thousand classes we have available in this game are playing each one to their unique powers and strengths. If I want to play bargain bin kroguard I'll just play a goddamn kroguard. I hate trying to make a class something it's not - and I've found very few classes where I can't find something that works as a real power strategy so I can be effective no matter what I'm using.

with the smash nerfs, frankly both the ex-cerberus classes are really low on my list, unfortunately. They just don't work right.

I mean your game, your builds, whatever, I just disagree and am a jerk on the internet!

e: the one exception to this is shockwave. shockwave sucks now and forevermore.

IMO there is no point in making a slayer without phase disruptor, because at that point you're playing a shittier version of Krogan Vanguard and/or Shadow. so what's the point?

there's also the part where PD is completely awesome.

To me, part of using all the five thousand classes we have available in this game are playing each one to their unique powers and strengths. If I want to play bargain bin kroguard I'll just play a goddamn kroguard. I hate trying to make a class something it's not - and I've found very few classes where I can't find something that works as a real power strategy so I can be effective no matter what I'm using.

Well I suppose you could look at it that way if the Kroguard's specific strength is your sole marker of value. I look at the Slayer not as a tanking Vanguard, but as a more agile Vanguard who also does comparable melee damage to the Krogard - since I favor the Fury, this fits my playstyle.

Also, he can toppele enemies and crush bosses through walls with a wave of Biotic Energy.

Solo'd the weekend challenge with the Battlemaster. Took me a few tries, the first time I got OHK'd in Wave 10 (by a Brute, of all things).

The Reaper challenge is fucking impossible because of all of the husks you have to kill. I may work on that alongside my Lone Wolf challenge. Soloing Bronze 10 times is easily doable, and as long as I am grinding for a challenge, I might as well grind for multiple challenges.

Use the spawn system to your advantage. Solo a reaper gold. In wave 1, there are a max of 3 husks on the map at once, but if you kill them it will continue to spawn husks until the wave's spawn budget is depleted - there's no hard cap to how many husks it'll spawn except as dictated by the spawn budget.

So if you just do wave 1, killing nothing but husks (just run from the cannibals) it'll spawn new husks and you kill them, repeat this until you finally deplete the wave budget. Then restart, repeat. You can grind it out as fast as possible this way, but note that this isn't really 'fast.'

It is of course soul-suckingly boring so I would only suggest doing this after you've ground out all the other challenges so as to minimize your husk grindpocalypse.

There's a spreadsheet somewehre on Google Docs with really technical details about spawn budget and per-wave spawn allotments and all that junk if you really want to minmax your title grinding.

Ditto, though it was against Cerberus, and so I took care to shoot Phantoms and Atlases instead of taking the chance. Ended up taking only one Bronze solo run, but requires ignoring the objective to kill mooks. In wave 10, after the initial group of Phantoms and Atlas, there were only troopers and engineers spawning. All fairly easy prey for the biotic charge.

Use the spawn system to your advantage. Solo a reaper gold. In wave 1, there are a max of 3 husks on the map at once, but if you kill them it will continue to spawn husks until the wave's spawn budget is depleted - there's no hard cap to how many husks it'll spawn except as dictated by the spawn budget.

So if you just do wave 1, killing nothing but husks (just run from the cannibals) it'll spawn new husks and you kill them, repeat this until you finally deplete the wave budget. Then restart, repeat. You can grind it out as fast as possible this way, but note that this isn't really 'fast.'

It is of course soul-suckingly boring so I would only suggest doing this after you've ground out all the other challenges so as to minimize your husk grindpocalypse.

There's a spreadsheet somewehre on Google Docs with really technical details about spawn budget and per-wave spawn allotments and all that junk if you really want to minmax your title grinding.

Use the spawn system to your advantage. Solo a reaper gold. In wave 1, there are a max of 3 husks on the map at once, but if you kill them it will continue to spawn husks until the wave's spawn budget is depleted - there's no hard cap to how many husks it'll spawn except as dictated by the spawn budget.

So if you just do wave 1, killing nothing but husks (just run from the cannibals) it'll spawn new husks and you kill them, repeat this until you finally deplete the wave budget. Then restart, repeat. You can grind it out as fast as possible this way, but note that this isn't really 'fast.'

It is of course soul-suckingly boring so I would only suggest doing this after you've ground out all the other challenges so as to minimize your husk grindpocalypse.

There's a spreadsheet somewehre on Google Docs with really technical details about spawn budget and per-wave spawn allotments and all that junk if you really want to minmax your title grinding.

Unfortunately the Husks are all that's left of the Reaper challenge for me. I'm at 183201/450000 for Husk points.

Isn't it ironic how when you want an easy solo, the Reapers are the faction now? A few months ago, that definitely wasn't the case. Now that you can get within 20 meters of a Banshee and not have to worry about getting sync-killed it's easy peasy.

With the latest patch fix to dragoons (i.e. they actually take proper combo damage now, thanks for nothing Bioware you dicks) I still argue Cerberus is the most fun/fair/whatever overall for a squad of 4, but actually imo the faction to solo is Geth. Reapers have really good combined arms and I'm incredibly friggin tired of banshee howls. And banshees.

I haven't actually played geth this week to find out if geth bombers still have that annoying "ignore half the powers you use on them" ability, which is probably a bug but bioware. If that's fixed, that makes them even less stupid.

Collectors are still stupid. That scion fix didn't actually fix the root issue at all, which worries me about "oh yeah we'll fix Collectors in the upcoming weeks." oh will you? Not a good start!

but actually imo the faction to solo is Geth. Reapers have really good combined arms and I'm incredibly friggin tired of banshee howls. And banshees.

The advantage to solo'ing Reapers is that Banshees are, relatively speaking, easier to kite. Yeah Ravagers suck, but do they really suck that much more than Primes, or perhaps Hunters flanking you? Although Geth not having a sync kill is a bonus.

Then again, I never bothered trying to solo until now with the challenges, so *shrug*.

but actually imo the faction to solo is Geth. Reapers have really good combined arms and I'm incredibly friggin tired of banshee howls. And banshees.

The advantage to solo'ing Reapers is that Banshees are, relatively speaking, easier to kite. Yeah Ravagers suck, but do they really suck that much more than Primes, or perhaps Hunters flanking you? Although Geth not having a sync kill is a bonus.

Then again, I never bothered trying to solo until now with the challenges, so *shrug*.

The thing that sucks about Banshees, and Brutes at times, at least as Vanguard, is that I've been sync killed just before impact of the biotic charge, and it was a charge from a decent distance, definitely not starting in melee range.

The thing that sucks about Banshees, and Brutes at times, at least as Vanguard, is that I've been sync killed just before impact of the biotic charge, and it was a charge from a decent distance, definitely not starting in melee range.

The game places you at your destination when when you start the charge (you can see it when following a vanguard when dead). I'm guessing it sets a flag that you're charging but that doesn't always take. FWIW, I've never been sync grabbed out of charge when charging at a safe time and I play a lot of off-host vanguard so I blame myself when it happens.

I've never been sync-killed out of charge. I've had that silly magnet hands drag you from halfway across the map happen with both Banshees and Atlas pre-patch, but never a sync-kill out of a charge. I'm pretty conservative with vanguard play, though ... sometimes I don't even take the shield restore option for BC.

I'm pretty conservative with vanguard play, though ... sometimes I don't even take the shield restore option for BC.

WHHHAAaaaaaat??

...I guess you could totally alter your playstyle, sure, and maybe it might even make you play more cautiously. But, but...I dunno, I don't think I could do it.

It's highly dependent on what class I'm playing. One of my favorite classes is the Asariguard, and I like to use her as grenadier. When I run her that way I take all options for power boosts, and slap on a Power Amp IV. I'll bubble snipe with a Paladin, and the occasional BC to keep my damage output high, but it's not really a CQC style of play, so I feel the shield restore option is wasted. You still get 50% of your shields back out of a BC ... but it helps prevent me from being reckless if I can't rely on that option to save me if I get in trouble. Taking the power/force option in rank 4 is enough to stagger anything in the game anyway, so if I get desperate BC+Grenade drop usually gives me enough time to scramble to cover while the rest of my shields recover.

I wouldn't try that with a Drell, Slayer, Novaguard, or Krogan, though.

The Asariguard pretty much rocks - probably the most versatile and powerful of all the Vanguards. She can do ranged, crowd control, high DPS, CQC, or focus on a single target if need be. She was the first "complete 200 waves with" achievement I got, since she's so much fun.

I'm pretty conservative with vanguard play, though ... sometimes I don't even take the shield restore option for BC.

WHHHAAaaaaaat??

I mentioned it on the last page but I take the charge reset option on the Asari and Krogan. I was doing 4/6/6/6/4 Kishock on the Asari and then they buffed everything about the spec and I didn't need Asari Commando 6 to one-shot phantoms so I shuffled to 6/6/6/5/3. I take the reset on the Krogan because he has enough shielding/DR that half is generally enough and if it's not and I'm not lucky there's time to hit an ops pack. The more frequent charges help maintain the post-charge DR. I'll mention that tried it recently on the smashguard and failed miserably.

Josh A.K.A CLF wrote:

The Asariguard pretty much rocks - probably the most versatile and powerful of all the Vanguards. She can do ranged, crowd control, high DPS, CQC, or focus on a single target if need be. She was the first "complete 200 waves with" achievement I got, since she's so much fun.

I'd agree. She was fine before the charge and lift grenade buffs but now she does 2.8k per lift grenade with a power amp iii. The nice thing about her is that you can do it all with the 6/6/6/5/3 (or 4/4 as you like it) spec. The Drellguard is similarly flexible but I spec him 3 different ways depending on playstyle and he just does not have enough shields.

Most of the ones here are playing Gold, everything else is often mentioned explicitely because Gold is the standard for really measuring the worth of somehing.

Also, just played the challanges and then bought a few packs... and I'm getting infinitely tired on the fact that I get a ton of uncommon consumables while still having so many Uncommon items unfulfilled. I almost have none of the Uncommon equipment, and I still only get stupid consumables, which I have a ton of.

What difficulty do you play your AV on because I am vaguely tepid about 'versatile' and most definitely disagree with 'powerful'

The only time I play anything less than Gold runs is when I'm soloing.

By versatile, she has many different play styles. I've set her up as a bubble-sniper/headshot machine with a Mantis, Viper, Valiant, Carnifex, Scoped Talon, and Paladin as her main weapon. Stasis can be configured for damage or crowd control. I've set her up as a close quarter combat specialist with a Talon, Hurricane, Tempest, or even a Disciple as her primary weapon.

The thing that makes the class is the lift grenades. Those things are just ridiculously powerful and complement either a CQC or a sniper build very well. I've never tried it, but I've heard of some suicidal aggressive builds where she's specc'd for melee damage with a power boost for heavy melee kills, which gives the lift grenades and BC an even bigger boost.

Also, just played the challanges and then bought a few packs... and I'm getting infinitely tired on the fact that I get a ton of uncommon consumables while still having so many Uncommon items unfulfilled. I almost have none of the Uncommon equipment, and I still only get stupid consumables, which I have a ton of.

What kind of packs are you buying? The common logic is that you buy Veteran packs for Uncommons, PSPs for rares, and SPs for Ultra-rares. I, of course, ignored common logic and leveled up mainly through PSPs, at first, then finished out with SPs, which is exclusively how I spend my credits these days.

I've set her up as a bubble-sniper/headshot machine with a Mantis, Viper, Valiant, Carnifex, Scoped Talon, and Paladin as her main weapon. Stasis can be configured for damage or crowd control. I've set her up as a close quarter combat specialist with a Talon, Hurricane, Tempest, or even a Disciple as her primary weapon.

I maintain that Kishock is the ultimate weapon on her if you're willing to reload cancel. With consumables you can one-shot anything with a head (pyros require them) and can drop mooks with uncharged shots as fast as you can reload cancel and aim. If you're charging it and you keep holding the trigger through a biotic charge, you'll fire at your crosshair when you start the charge and be reloaded when you get there for the finishing shot. Where the reload canceling comes in is that the weapon is low sustained dps if you don't reload cancel when shooting bosses. Grenade spam would work there but I'm at 255 ammo and trying to restock my medigels and ops packs.

Josh A.K.A CLF wrote:

I've never tried it, but I've heard of some suicidal aggressive builds where she's specc'd for melee damage with a power boost for heavy melee kills, which gives the lift grenades and BC an even bigger boost.

It's less suicidal than it was before the shotgun omni blade came into play. I tried it but couldn't get enough damage on the heavy to instagib health-only mobs so it was rough and even with the blade I wouldn't do it where multiple enemies could shoot you. I ran across a melee valkyrie video yesterday. Tech Armor provides the same DR that charge provides but he's also getting damage from TA and AF so that's a rough idea of how the melee part works.

What kind of packs are you buying? The common logic is that you buy Veteran packs for Uncommons, PSPs for rares, and SPs for Ultra-rares. I, of course, ignored common logic and leveled up mainly through PSPs, at first, then finished out with SPs, which is exclusively how I spend my credits these days.

It doesnt matter, thats the problem. I've been running PSP's for a good while, before that I ran SP for a while, and I've gone back to SP the last days to have a better chance of rounding out my last uncommon weapon points, although I also did a few Veteran packs just to see if they had a difference in uncommons equipment vs Uncommon gear, but no.

I have about 3 points left on Uncommon weapons, those seem to pop up regularly enough, the problem is that except one of those few every now and then, I only get the damn equipment uncommons. I have a total of 10 points into uncommon gear, and non of which I actually use on my classes except the adaptive war amp lvl 2. 16 Rare gear and a total of 152 equipment(lvl 3 and lvl 4).

The RNG is dumb, but if I were you I'd buy regular SPs for a while. I've gotten uncommon gear out of them slightly more than I've gotten ultrarares

It's no fun buying an SP and rolling five consumables, but from what I understand the way the drops work is that for every slot, first it rolls an item type, then it rolls for rarity. If it rolls an item type/rarity you already have maxed, welcome to an ammo/consumable card.

For example, I have all rare/uncommon/common guns maxed out. So if any box rolls weapon of any rarity (that isn't UR) i am getting consumables whether I want to or not. And I still have gear left to unlock. It's obnoxious.

So all those times you get L4 ammo it's really sort of a nasty double bind because so many of the potential rolls will be full and result in ammo instead of something you want.

The logical followthrough of all this is that it does not roll 'gear' as an item type nearly often enough, especially in boxes which are apt to give you uncommon items.

what I would appreciate is Bioware reworking its roll calculations to prevent boxes from giving you five consumables if it is at all possible without rerolling rarity. So instead of getting 3 uncommon and 2 rare consumables, the game would say "wait, he still has uncommon gear and rare gear...I'll change at least one of those to non-consumable."

but of course, doing that would let me max my stuff faster and hey I might turn into one of those lunatics who've spent $1500 on packs, so they won't.

but of course, doing that would let me max my stuff faster and hey I might turn into one of those lunatics who've spent $1500 on packs, so they won't.

This game is fun, but I can think of a lot better ways to enjoy $1500 than spend it on BioWare points for Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer credits. I think I actually started having more fun when I stopped worrying about the items I didn't have, and started toying around with configurations to get the most out of what I did have. Somewhere along the way I unlocked everything (rares), without really even noticing it.

Funny how that worked out.

Still haven't figured out how to make the Disciple into an extraordinary weapon, without putting it on the Human Soldier, of course. Funny how I didn't give the HS any love until recently, and now I think it's hands down the single best weapons class in the game. So much that I'd rather focus on powers for the other classes ... although Turian Soldiers could probably use slingshots and score a bunch of headshots, which is nice.

Disciple is a stagger gun, not really a damage gun. I put it on novaguards and any other class who tends to be up close and really could use on-demand stagger. Fury, maybe Asari Valkryie now. Basically run around and use powers and when you're trying to survive a quick cooldown, stagger someone with it.

Until they nerf the Acolyte, though, I'm using that on approximately all my casters. That gun is amazing. I advise everyone to get their 200,000 points with it for Survivor now even if you don't want Survivor as a title.

So this past week I played a LOT of ME3MP, got my 1k waves progress notice the last game I played and got the biotic title. Sandy messed things up quite a bit here and so it was mostly silver until this weekend since connectivity was intermittent and I don't like to screw up people's gold games unnecessarily. Had some pretty epic desyncs. In one I was doing a Reegar BF3 soldier with AR bonus power to see how fast I could kill bosses and managed to kill a prime that turned out not to be there or at least I never got credit for it. In another I was doing Turian Havoc where I ran around doing no damage for 6 waves. I did find that heavy melee somehow forces a sync, which is REALLY helpful when Shockwave bugs out.

What surprised me about doing silver was how good the players are during the workday. I think they're in silver to farm challenges but I'd say 40% or so of my workday silver games had all 4 players playing well. This is as opposed to gold games were it's generally 15-20% and you otherwise have that one guy who is terrible.

Following our vanguard discussion. I did a couple AV gold games so I could put up scores and brag about it but it turns out print screen doesn't take a screenshot. The best game I had going was a glacier where I had 35k at wave 3 but I got overaggressive and died. No prob, objective's done so I can just bleed out and team will finish things off, right? No, all three got grabbed by the one banshee. Did a two others 105k and 112k using sniper and grenade style and had one fail but no screenshots.

The most surprisingly good game I had this week is the one I just finished. FQE 6/6/6/4/4with a Cryo III Acolyte. FBW Gold Geth (random) with pizza/kill/kill objectives. Pretty much just spammed acolyte/incinerate and each one would take a mob to 1-2 bars. Wound up in first with a 107k. I need to give it a try with 5/3 to see if that turns the incinerates into kills or if I have to use consumables.

Did a bunch of gold Volus Engineer games. Extracted every time and had scores around 50-60k, which pleases me. I find it useful to leave the recon mine out in a chokepoint during hack circles and debuff with proxy mine for my teammates for the big 45% damage boost and only set it off when I had 4 mobs or a half-armor boss. I do hate the stupid VEngs who don't shield boost. There's one I ran into three times doing silver who would do nothing but spam recon mine and try to get top score.

Finally, I found a winning Volus Adept build. This was earlier in the week so I haven't done it on gold but I don't see why it wouldn't work. I'll do it after I finish off the 200 VEng waves.

Actually had alot of fun with the dual-challenge weekend. The charge one seemed like it was going to take awhile till I specced a regular human vanguard with the multi-charge and just started blitzing around while holding a Reegar shottie. Fun times. Even though it's easy to die being reckless, it's so fun to pull off a good charge and live through it

Unlocked Volus Adept but didn't try it - but I did score a Valkyrie AR in my commendation pack :O So looking forward to trying that.

I'm up to a Crusader IV, now. Only commendation weapon I'm missing is the Hurricane, now. But, I do get a lot of use out of the Eagle, which is really a slow-firing SMG in disguise.

A couple of weeks late, I unlocked my first Krogan (Sentinel), followed immediately by my second Krogan (Vanguard).

So, how do you spec these guys? What is a Krogan Sentinel for? Incinerate doesn't really seem to synergize with anything else, unless you max it out for armor weakening as just generally useful. I'm almost tempted to go 3/6/6/5/6 or 0/6/6/6/6, leave Tech armor up all the time, ignore cooldowns, and take the heaviest weapons I have.

Also, the Krogard (Battlemaster) confuses me. Why do I want a Barrier that lowers my cooldowns, limiting how often I can Charge, when I already have some of the strongest shields and health in the game? Also, is the Evo6 that gives you Rage in only 2 melee kills ever worth it, or is giving up the Evo6 shields too much of a price?

I've never tried a Kroguard without Barrier, but my reasoning is that the shield multiplier is most valuable on a character that has a shitload of shields to be multiplied in the first place. On a Drell it would be silly; you don't want to be getting hit in the first place. On a Krogan I feel like a big part of my job is to be getting shot at. So my teammates aren't. Because I can take it. I don't get points for tanking, but that doesn't mean I'm not useful. Fun fact: Kroguards can tie up Primes indefinitely as long as you stay in melee range. I've even done two at a time (on Gold).

In other news, I was a spectacular failure as a Human Soldier w/ a Reegar. I was hoping the AR reload would synergise with the Reegar's small mag, but I ended up mopping the floor with my face again and again. Without the raw HP of a Krogan or regen of a Vorcha, I was just completely ineffective. Did better with a Saber, but I didn't really hit my stride until I switched over to a Human Engineer to work on my tech/SMG cheevo.

Pity you don't seem to get any special achievement credit for playing the base Human classes.

Krogan Sentinel: I go 6/0/6/6/6, skipping Incinerate. Lift Grenades help burst damage against elites, but otherwise just a "bring whatever weapon you want" class. Also, since there are no cooldowns to speak of, I kamikaze into seeker swarms. This doesn't always work since seekers seem to have a small AoE effect, but it's funny.

Krogan Battlemaster: First, you should realize that unlike Tech Armor, Barrier costs no time to cast (TA doesn't have cooldown but there's a un-interuptable animation). So it's useful both as offensive and defensive. Second, I run the class 6/0/6/6/6, skipping Carnage, and with power & weight for rank 4 of the passive tree. This allows me to carry heavier weapons with also a generous cooldown. Then it's mostly a melee game, with guns against sync-killing elites and BC to cross rooms, sometimes charge shields, and whatnot. Between Rage, Barrier, and BC, it's pretty easy to never take any cover in Silver and never lose all your shields.

Evo6 in Rage is a questionable one. I don't use it for Battlemaster, because a weird quirk means that while Biotic Charge kills aren't "melee" kills for the purposes of badges, but they are melee kills for the purpose of generating Rage. Combined with the radius upgrade for Biotic Charge, one charge into mooks will get you 3 kills and Rage city. I don't really need the melee bonus. On the other hand, it's useful for Gold, because there simply will be fewer mooks to get 3 kills on.

The most common spec on the Sentinel is to skip incinerate and ignore cooldowns. I take power damage over melee damage on TA and spec into pure rage (but not Martial Artist) because I can generally sustain 2 melee kills every 30s but not 3. Also note his damage & capacity is bad for power damage so I avoid it but I do take power damage over headshots. I use shield cooldown reduction gear/consumables on him since I tend not to use it otherwise.

Artichoke Sap wrote:

Also, the Krogard (Battlemaster) confuses me. Why do I want a Barrier that lowers my cooldowns, limiting how often I can Charge, when I already have some of the strongest shields and health in the game? Also, is the Evo6 that gives you Rage in only 2 melee kills ever worth it, or is giving up the Evo6 shields too much of a price?

Unlike other Vanguards, the Kroguard is tough enough that you're generally not living on the charge cooldown. The DR stacks with the other DRs (post-charge, rage) to make him near-invincible because why not? The 20% is worth it IMO if you're otherwise over 150% cooldowns.

Pure Rage isn't worth it on him. You (somehow) get melee credit for Biotic Charge kills so it's easy to maintain a 3 stack. If you want more melee damage, 4a is 60% on Krogans with Rage instead of the normal 30% so I tend to take that and durablility on 6 with the exception of the Sentinel, mentioned above.

Here's how I'd spec him. I use a Wraith instead of a Reegar so I go weapon damage on the racial. You're likely to want Barrier instead of bonus power on charge. I mostly use it so I can charge as close to every 3s as possible to maintain the post-charge DR.